


Should

by Trobadora



Series: Mercury [7]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 09:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3128762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor hadn't meant to fall asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts).



His mind drifts for a long time before consciousness slowly seeps in. The Doctor breathes in blanket-warm air, musky with sex and sweat and sleep. Jack's chest under his cheek is warm, too, rising and falling steadily with his breathing.

The Doctor hadn't meant to fall asleep.

Quickly corrected, that - all he needs to do is throw off the blanket and Jack's arm around him, and bounce to his feet. All he needs to do is snatch his clothes from wherever they fell, and wave a jaunty good-bye at Jack's bleary, just-woken-up eyes. Quick movements, quickly over, and he'll be on his way.

The Doctor blinks into the darkness, briefly, then lets his eyelids fall again.

In a moment.

Jack is deep asleep. Faint dream-images flicker across the shared boundaries of their selves - Time Lords are touch telepaths, after all, and they've slid into a faint connection in their sleep.

He should shy away from that. If anything of his is leaking through ... well, he wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Jack would probably say the same in return.

He should stop this; he should be leaving. He knows he should. The Doctor isn't sure why he's delaying, why the arm around him, the blanket and the human mind against his, why the unaccustomed warmth of shared sleep hasn't become stifling. 

Muscles that should be itching to move are resting, sleep-heavy and warm. There's a gravitational pull to the bed and the man beneath him, holding him trapped like an event horizon. 

He should be gone by now. If the thought of waking Jack is unappealing, he could just slide out unnoticed, sending Jack into deeper, dreamless sleep through the telepathic contact, and be gone long before Jack knows.

The Doctor has never been good at good-byes; best to avoid them where he can.

Best to avoid the look in Jack's eyes, the inevitable question: _Will you come back again, this time?_ The question he'll never be able to answer, no matter that Jack deserves better.

Jack can take it, anyway. They both can.

Yes, he should be leaving, should have left rather than lying here, breathing against Jack's skin, his legs still tangled with Jack's, all of him heavy and warm and sinking into the mattress, into Jack. He has to get moving. Now.

Instead, his tongue explores the slightly bitter taste of Jack in his mouth, and his face shifts itself all on its own, his lips curling a smile into Jack's skin.

The warmth of the blanket, of Jack's skin, of the air between them is soothing, and the steady rhythms of Jack's breathing and his single, human heartbeat are soothing. Jack's dreaming mind at the edge of his own is soothing, and even the steel-bolt firmness of his timeline, an inescapable Fact driven into and through space-time by a Vortex-powered God, is nothing but solid and comforting, an anchor for the Doctor's heavy limbs.

He should leave. 

He won't.

The Doctor lets himself sink into the drowsiness, into the warmth, into Jack.


End file.
